Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

180 J.J. Haldane
and defence of Aquinas’s first three ways, and primarily of the first and
second of them. In passing, let me strongly urge those who have not already
done so to read the relevant article of the Summa (S. T., Ia, q. 2, a. 3). The
whole thing only runs to three pages! There cannot be many such short
sections of text that have deserved, or received, so much study.
In his reply, Smart observes that it is not necessary in arguing for a first
cause to assume that it is temporally prior. I agree and said as much, noting
that Aquinas’s proofs are intended ‘to establish the ontological not the
temporal priority of the first cause’ (chapter 2, p. 122). What then followed,
in order to show that there could not be an infinite series of causes, is not
essentially tied to temporality. Smart introduces a reason to suggest that it
had better not be, namely that the theistic conception of God should not
locate him in time. As I suggested, however, the question of God’s relation to
time, especially as that bears upon the issue of divine agency, is complicated
by the fact that there is a sense in which an ‘activity’ may be dated and timed
though its source cannot be. If x caused y at t, we can say that x’s agency was
effective at t, without being committed to the claim that at t, x began to do
something. Thus one might wish to argue that a series of causes and effects
could not regress infinitely in time, while yet denying that its originating
source – effective in a temporally first event – was itself temporally located.
Smart remains worried about other metaphysical and theological ideas
deployed in my presentation. There is not the space to elaborate on these
matters here, but again I would ask readers to go back and try to judge the
adequacy of what I wrote in the light of Smart’s criticisms. For the most part
he is generous in allowing that what I claim is defensible, and only contends
that better – non-theistic – options are available. But on one topic he is
clearly quite unsympathetic, or at any rate bemused. This is the issue of free
action.
It is a common experience that there are certain philosophical issues where
differences of view are accompanied by perplexity as to how one’s opponents
imagine that what they maintain is, or even could be, satisfactory. One such
issue is weakness of will; another is consequentialism in ethics; a third is free
will and determinism. Smart recognizes that part of my defence against the
argument to atheism from evil rests on the claim that were God to act
continuously so as to prohibit or limit the evil caused by human choices he
would remove our freedom and thereby inhibit the realization of our natures
as rational agents. Setting aside the question of the value of rational selfrealization,
Smart has a more immediate objection to my defence, namely
that it presupposes an incoherent notion of free action as action that is
uncaused. Once again readers will have to make a judgement from preceding
pages but it may be helpful if I address Smart’s puzzlement about the idea
that human action issues from a source ‘within’ the agent.